


of all the gin joints

by scribblscrabbl



Category: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Genre: M/M, brandt knows all, ethan is full of surprises, five times fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-01
Updated: 2012-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-31 22:33:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/349037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblscrabbl/pseuds/scribblscrabbl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will doesn't quite remember when it became his unofficial job to save Ethan Hunt from himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of all the gin joints

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the kink meme prompt: five times Will surprised Ethan by knowing something about him that no one else knows, and one time Ethan shares something Will doesn't know.

**1.**

“Don’t,” he stops Ethan’s chopsticks with two fingers, “eat that.”

Ethan shifts his attention from his iPad to the piece of sushi he snatched from Will’s plate and stares. 

“Why? You’re eating it.” The logic would be bulletproof if it weren’t for one tiny detail.

“It has mango on it.” 

Ethan looks at Will, in the way he can never get a handle on, the way that makes him think Ethan knows him more thoroughly than he finds comfortable.

“Mango? What’s wrong with mango?” 

He turns to Benji, who’s wrangling with a piece of sushi that’s already fallen apart under the flailing motions of his chopsticks.

“Ethan’s allergic. It’ll trigger anaphylaxis.” 

The avocado Benji managed to pick up falls to his plate when he freezes.

“I figured death by sushi isn’t really your style,” Will deadpans, wondering how obvious it is that he’s pored over Ethan’s dossier (line by line the day he gave up the field and committed Ethan Hunt to memory).

“You know me too well.” Ethan’s lips twitch. He doesn’t seem uncomfortable or irritated, just curious, as if Will’s resourcefulness is _endearing_ , the ungrateful bastard.

“I just saved your life,” he points out calmly as he spears his sushi with a chopstick.

“Careful before you make a habit out of it.” Ethan flashes a full smile (unconsciously disarming) before he returns to his work, and Will imagines that the advice is too little, too late.

**2.**

It’s their third time in Dubai intercepting terrorists with a penchant for nuclear war. His patience is wearing thin but he can’t say he doesn’t appreciate the accommodations, or the suit. He can see the Burj Khalifa bisecting the sky when he turns to the window.

He adjusts his cuffs and slides his fingers across the Italian wool. He’s normally a t-shirt and jeans kind of guy, but he’s come to appreciate luxury when he has it. Their last mission landed them in the middle of the Amazon and intimately acquainted him with more insect species than he ever cared to acknowledge.

He’s securing his Windsor knot when he walks into the sitting area. Jane’s already there, perched on an armrest in a magnificent floor-length gown with a plunging neckline. Benji’s dressed for a night behind the computer, in all black because he claims it makes him feel like a spy even though he’s not doing spy things per se.

“Jane, stunning as always.”

She smiles and blushes a little, the way she always does in response to compliments. He can imagine how easily she attracts men and how unwittingly she breaks their hearts.

“You’re not so bad yourself.”

“Hey, what about me? The dashing bloke at the computer, deftly hacking into an impenetrable security system?” Benji’s wearing his wounded puppy look, the same one he pulls out when Ethan tells him they won’t be wearing masks.

“We could give you a shot at seducing the rich guy. Don’t think the dress would fit you though.” 

“Okay, we have about ten minutes before Moreaux arrives. Benji, do you have access yet?” Ethan walks in while looping a tie around his neck. A hideous purple tie with hideous green strips that makes Benji open his mouth only to close it again and then stare like Ethan’s wearing nothing but a party hat (although it’s a pleasant image if Will has anything to say about it).

“Ethan, your tie—it’s—” Jane starts and stops, clearly unable to phrase it tactfully.

“ _Hideous_.” Benji sounds appalled. 

Ethan looks down. “Shit, I must’ve grabbed the wrong one.”

Benji still looks appalled. “You’d have to be color blind to—”

“I am.”

“He is.”

There’s complete silence when Ethan pulls off the tie as if Will hadn’t spoken and studies it for a moment, looking unexpectedly lost (unexpectedly ordinary, like he’s never killed men with his bare hands or saved the world). It’s when the tie slips from his palm that Will remembers where they are and that it’s become his unofficial job to save Ethan Hunt from himself.

“Here, use mine.” He loosens his perfect Windsor knot, pulls off the tie, and reaches Ethan in three long strides. “Dark blue. It’ll go with Jane’s dress.”

The tips of his shoes touch Ethan’s as he steps just a little closer, watching Ethan watch him as his fingers move blindly, perfectly. The smell of Ethan’s cologne is sharp and familiar, and reminds him of the time they tried to dance to Billy Holiday, the kind of music he openly loves and Ethan a little secretly. Tried until they forgot who was leading. 

He pushes up the knot until it sits squarely at the hollow of Ethan’s throat and turns down the collar, hands only slightly unsteady but he imagines Ethan notices it like he does everything else.

“Go get ‘em, James Bond.” 

His fingertips are still at the edges of Ethan’s lapels when Ethan’s smile confesses that he would rather be a little more ordinary.

**3.**

“Why don’t I ever get to dress up all smooth and James Bond-like?” Benji has his arms crossed defiantly (petulantly) over his chest. Will thinks he might be pouting. “I can work a crowd. I’m charming. I have a very magnetic personality I’ll have you know.”

They’re in a 30th floor suite of the Bellagio, waiting for a target with a gambling problem and financial links to every known extremist group in Central Asia. Ethan’s rifling through his duffel, shirt untucked and unbuttoned to reveal the dip of his collarbone, white cotton stark against his newly acquired desert tan. Will leans against the sofa and indulges in the view. 

“I’m sure you’d have Persoff spilling his secrets in no time, but I need you at the computer, Benji, you’re the best there is.”

Benji wavers a moment at the flattery, but then gets a second wind. “I can set up the timer and then slip downstairs! It’s a simple algorithm, I don’t see why I need to monitor it _all_ night.”

Ethan tosses Will the loaded die, red with beveled corners and white dots to match the ones at the Bellagio tables. He catches it with one hand and rolls it around his palm, wondering at the amount of ingenuity condensed into such an insignificant weight.

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

“Oi! Who’s the lady?” Then Benji pauses mid-protest to reassess Ethan’s statement. “—did you just quote _Shakespeare_?”

Will considers Ethan, follows the path of his fingers as they methodically roll down his shirt sleeves, the left and then the right. They were the hands of an artist once, Will thinks. Hands unfamiliar with the weight of a gun, the recoil after a shot, with blood, or with war. He imagines what they used to carry were smears of ink and the smell of books, and that, for 21 years, all Ethan had known of tragedy were lines written by the dead.

“Careful. He might rattle off Milton next.”

Ethan’s eyes find his, telling him the wonders he used to love that he’s never found the heart to relinquish. 

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

**4.**

They're knocking back whiskey shots at 3 pm on a Tuesday because Jane's finally out of the hospital with color in her cheeks reminding them of what they could've lost. Will doesn't have to look at Ethan to know he's replaying the mission in his head and it's getting sharper as the burn in his throat gets duller. 

Benji motions to the bartender for refills and for once he has no words, no compulsion to disrupt the silence. 

"We got her out of there alive. That's all that matters now."

Ethan looks like he would throw a punch if he had one or two more shots in him. Will would've stood there and taken it, let Ethan draw a little blood because it'd be better in the long run than self-destruction. 

"I think it's time for me to give it up. The field. It only gets worse, never better. Someone else can save the world." 

Ethan's drunk, though, Will can tell. He isn't slurring or unsteady but there's something hopeless in him he usually bears flawlessly that's weighing down his eyelids now and the curve of his spine. 

"Fuck, Ethan, you're the best we've got. We'd be a bloody sorry lot without you."

Benji's sentimentality makes him knock back the shot he's been nursing because he figured there should be at least one responsible adult at the bar. Now he thinks that he prefers to kick responsibility in the ass and get thoroughly shit-faced until he empties his stomach of the sickness he feels every time he thinks (the hit they didn't see coming, the blood as dark as the rain only thicker, the stain on Jane's lips).

"The best." Ethan laughs thickly, humorlessly. “That’s what they keep telling me. Sounds like bullshit every time.”

“You drunk, Ethan,” Benji’s slurring now, sloshing whiskey onto his fingers, “smashed, pissed, rat-arsed. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Will knocks back another one and slams the glass down. It doesn’t make as much noise as he thought it would. He turns it on its side and spins it, stares at it until his vision blurs. 

“Ethan doesn’t think he can cut it because he failed his field exam the first time, didn’t you, Ethan?” He blinks and turns to his left. Ethan’s jaw clenches. “Something about letting his emotions get in the way. They had high hopes for you, Ethan, and you let the poor bastards down.”

He knows he’s being cruel, jabbing barbed wire under Ethan’s skin, careful to pick out the sore spots and make it hurt. He taunts because he thinks Ethan’s being a fucking hypocrite, wallowing in regret when he’s told Will that it’s a waste of breath, that the blood on his hands can only make him better. 

It only takes a moment for Ethan to turn and throw that punch. Afterwards he looks at Will one more time like he knows what Will’s trying to do, and then calls the bartender over for another to wash it all down. Will runs his tongue over the split in his lip and thinks that it’s beginning to taste like absolution.

**5.**

The motherfuckers had a girl, no older than thirteen with small shoulders and a wide mouth made for smiling. They’d killed her father, put a bullet through his head right in front of her, because he was a liability. 

Ethan broke the fingers of the man who’d held her in place and let her watch, before breaking his neck, eyes dark and manic. When he looked up, it’d taken Will a moment to find him (something recognisably Ethan), only to lose him again when he turned away to silence the remaining bodyguards as if somewhere along the way he’d earned the right to play God. 

They bring the girl with them to the van Benji commandeered from the loading dock. Ethan brings her, holding her hand like she’s his (sister, daughter, his atonement). 

“We should’ve kept one of them alive, Ethan, they could’ve had information,” Jane says once they start moving, but she doesn’t accuse because she sees it too even though she knows nothing. She picks up on a weakness, a trigger that keeps her at arm’s length.

“Doesn’t matter. We stick to the plan. We know Kaminski’s headed to Poznań.”

That’s when the girl starts to speak, quietly but feverishly as if she’s just heard the sound of home, certain that there she’ll find what she’s lost.

“Slow down, slow down,” Ethan says in Polish, broken because he’s let it fall to disuse and because he can’t quite trust his voice. “Your family, they’re in Poznań?”

She understands and nods eagerly, shifting closer to Ethan until her feet touch his. She speaks about her family, how worried her _babcia_ must be, and there are tears wetting her cheeks now, brave ones because she doesn’t forget her purpose. 

Ethan lets her tell her story, palms up on his knees, fingers curled as if he can catch her grief (pair it with his own). Will licks his chapped lips and tastes salt. He digs his fingernails into his palm and wonders what it would take for him to recover something for her, and for Ethan.

When she exhausts her words, she wipes her cheeks with a sleeve as she keeps her eyes on Ethan, sensing the tie that binds them even though she doesn’t understand.

“We’ll take you home.” Ethan covers both her hands with one of his, a reassurance that he’s a man who doesn’t break his promises.

She smiles then, and in that moment she almost looks like Anna. (The day Ethan disappeared was when Will found him at the cemetery on a hunch. He’d pulled out a picture he’d taken of her at the hospital, beaming beautifully like she had enough life in her to outlast him. He’d promised her she would.)

He hears Ethan inhale sharply, wetly, and he almost reaches out to lay a hand against the back of Ethan’s neck, pull him in until their foreheads touch. He wants to come up with one line to convince Ethan that he’s never needed to make amends and that she understood, she would’ve if she had been anything like him.

But the moment’s passed and when Ethan returns her smile, he thinks he can wait.

**6.**

The first time they kiss it feels like Ethan wants to start a war, light a powder keg beneath them and watch it blow. (The distinction of who kisses whom Will files away as an irrelevance.)

The second time it feels like Ethan’s on his knees.

Will finds him in the shower fully clothed, one palm braced against the tiles waiting for the hot spray to dilute the stains (the stench) of blood. The runoff is pink when it swirls down the drain.

“We did all right.”

They handed the government what it wanted and didn’t leave a man behind. They did better than all right; they were goddamn heroes.

He studies the slouch of Ethan’s shoulders and the long shallow cut across Ethan’s cheek, running from ear to mouth. Unsung heroes. He imagines that in the end they’ll have no honor guard, no folded flag for their sacrifice. Instead of the grief of a nation, they’ll have silence.

“Feels like all right is getting harder and harder to come by.”

Will steps into the shower with bare feet and watches the hems of his pants darken.

“You find a way. You always do.” He’s not sure if he’s saying it right. He’s not asking for a champion, only offering a little faith. (He would rather have Ethan at the end of everything, just Ethan.)

When Ethan finally turns, hair sodden across his forehead, chest expanding around slow, heaving breaths, his eyes cling to Will.

“I’m scared, Will. Every goddamn day.”

And if the world shattered around them at Ethan’s confession, he wouldn’t have noticed. He just reaches out to curl his fingers around the drenched cotton plastered to Ethan’s skin, right above his heart, and presses down with the heel of his hand. He thinks they deserve to feel permanent for a while, next to all other moments hell-bent on proving they’re not.

“Yea. Yea, me too,” and he kisses Ethan, licks into his mouth and makes him forget for a while that they’re not.


End file.
